Category Archives: Totally Tor

Hey Guys and Girls, got some news -brand new 2011 news- from Irene Gallo regarding the goings on at Tor.com. 🙂

First off, the 12 Doctors of Christmas, which began last month (hehe, last year, 😉 ) is finishing up and you can catch all the posts here.

Next up, Tor will be giving you a chance to vote for your Best SFF Novels of the Decade – yep, not just 2010, but 2000 to 2010. 🙂 The post will be going up shortly (my maths sucks, so don’t ask me what time it’ll be here in South Africa), at 11:30 US time, so don’t forget to check it out. 🙂

Here’s a bit more info:

For science fiction readers, witnessing the clock turn over to the year 2000 was a special feeling indeed. The divide had been crossed, the next century was here, and distant years bandied about solely in sci fi classics would now play out in reality.

Passing into 2011 echoes that feeling, as we now have an entire decade of the future that exists primarily in memory. We’ve done the work, so to speak, and can better appreciate the future in which we live.

In the spirit of appreciation, we now ask Tor.com readers to choose the best science fiction and fantasy novels of the first decade of the 21st century! Any novel published from January 1, 2000 to December 31, 2010 is eligible* and there’s no limit to how many you can pick.**

We’ll tabulate the novels mentioned in the comments until 11:59 PM EST on Friday, January 14and the ten with the highest number of votes will be featured in a short series of appreciation posts here on the site, featuring an array of guest writers! We’ll be updating the votes regularly here on Tor.com and on through our Twitter and Facebook accounts until the end of voting, so keep checking back. And rally your friends to vote on your favorite!

Next up, mark your calendars: the 12th of January (Wednesday) will see a new short story by Ken Scholes – “Making My Entrance Again With My Usual Flare”. I’m told is a science fiction romp with clowns. 😉 (Title sounds wayyy cooler now, huh?)

No one ever asks a clown at the end of his life what he really wanted to be when he grew up. It’s fairly obvious. No one gets hijacked into the circus. We race to it, the smell of hotdogs leading us in, our fingers aching for the sticky pull of taffy, the electric shock of pink cotton on our tongue. Ask a lawyer and he’ll say when he was a kid he wanted to be an astronaut. Ask an accountant; he’ll say he wanted to be fireman.

I am a clown. I have always wanted to be a clown. And I will die a clown if I have my way.

My name is Merton D. Kamal.

The Kamal comes from my father. I never met the man so I have no idea how he came by it. Mom got the Merton bit from some monk she used to read who wrote something like this: We learn humility by being humiliated often. Given how easily (and how frequently) Kamal is pronounced Camel, and given how the D just stands for D, you can see that she wanted her only child to be absolutely filled to the brim with humility.

My Mom is a deeply spiritual woman.

But enough about her. This is my story.

“Merton,” the ringmaster and owner Rufus P. Stowell said, “it’s just not working out.”

I was pushing forty. I’d lost some weight and everyone knows kids love a chubby clown. I’d also taken up drinking which didn’t go over well right before a show. So suddenly, I found myself without prospects and I turned myself towards home, riding into Seattle by bus on a cold November night.

Mom met me at the bus stop. She had no business driving but she came out anyway. She was standing on the sidewalk next to the station wagon when she saw me. We hugged.

“I’m glad you’re home,” she said.

I lifted my bag into the back. “Thanks.”

“Are you hungry?”

“Not really.”

We went to Denny’s anyway. Whenever my Mom wanted to talk, we went to Denny’s. It’s where she took me to tell me about boys and girls, it’s where she took me to tell me that my dog had been hit by a car.

“So what are you going to do now?” She cut and speared a chunk of meatloaf, then dipped it into her mashed potatoes and gravy before raising it to her mouth.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I’ll fatten up, quit drinking, get back into the business.” I watched her left eyebrow twitch—a sure sign of disapproval. I hefted my double bacon cheeseburger, then paused. “Why? What do you think I should do?”

She leaned forward. She brought her wrinkled hand up and cupped my cheek with it. Then she smiled. “I think you’ve already tried the clown thing, Merton. Why don’t you try something different?”

I grinned. “I always wanted to be a sword-swallower but you wouldn’t let me.”

Of course I did. I’d lost my virginity with her back in eleventh grade. It was my second most defining moment that year. Three days later, Rufus P. Stowell’s Traveling Big Top rolled into town and my first most defining moment occurred. They said I was a natural, I had the look and the girth. Would I be interested in an internship? I left a note for Nancy in her mailbox thanking her for everything in great detail, hugged my Mom goodbye and dropped out of high school to join the circus.

Mom was still waiting for me to answer. “Yes, I remember her.”

“Well, she’s some big mucky-muck now at CARECO.”

“And?” I took a bite of the cheeseburger.

“And I told her you were coming home and asked her if she’d interview you.”

I nearly choked. “You did what?”

“I asked her if she’d interview you. For a job.”

I had no idea what to say.

So the next morning, Mom took me down to J.C. Penney’s and bought me my first suit in thirty years. That afternoon, she dropped me downtown in front of the CARECO building, waved goodbye and drove away.

The CARECO building was new. I’d visited a few times over the years, had watched buildings come and buildings go. But I had never seen anything like this. It looked like a glass Rubik’s Cube tilted precariously in a martini glass full of green jello. Inside, each floor took on the color coding of the various policies they offered. Life insurance was green. Auto, a deep blue. I can’t remember what color Long-Term Disability was. Each color had been painfully worked out, according to a plaque near the door, by a team of eminent European corporate psychologists. Supposedly, it would enhance productivity by reducing the depression inherent within the insurance industry.

While I was reading the plaque, a man stepped up to me. He was as tan as a Californian, wearing sunglasses and a Hawaiian shirt despite impending rain. I went back to reading. “Excuse me,” he said.

“Yes?”

“Have you seen a monkey around here?”

I shook my head, not really paying attention to the question. “Sorry.”

He smiled. “Thanks anyway.”

I went inside. I rode three escalators, two elevators and talked to seven receptionists. I sat in a chair that looked like plastic but was really made of foam. I filled out long and complicated application forms.

An hour later, someone took me up into an office at the top of the highest point of the inside of the glass Rubik’s Cube.

Nancy Keller looked up. She smiled until my escort closed the door on her way out.

“Merton D. Camel,” she said, stretching each syllable.

“Kamal. Hi Nancy.” The view from her office was spectacular. The walls were glass framed in steel and I could see the city spread out around me in a wide view that pulled at my stomach. The office had a modern-looking desk in the middle of it, a few chairs and some potted plants.

“I’m surprised to see you after so long. Back from clowning around?”

“I am.” I smiled. “You look good.” And she did. Her legs were still long but her hair was short and she’d traded her Van Halen tank top for a crisp blue suit.

She ignored my compliment and pointed to another of those foam chairs. “Let’s get this over with.”

I sat. She sat. I waited, trying to ignore the places where my wool suit created urgent itching.

She studied my application, then she studied me. I kept waiting. Finally, she spoke. “This interview,” she said, “consists of two questions.” She leaned forward and I realized the button on her suit coat had popped open to reveal more cleavage than I remembered her having. “First question. Do you remember the day you left for the circus, three days after our . . . special moment.” She made little quote marks in the air when she said “special.”

I nodded. “I do. I left you a note.” I grinned. “I think I even said thank you. In some detail.”

She nodded, too. “Second question. Did you ever stop to think that maybe . . . just maybe . . . my father would be the one getting the mail?” She stood and pushed a button on her desk. I stood, too. “Thank you for coming, Mr. Camel. Patrice will see you out.” She extended her hand. I shook it and it was cold.

Later, I was working on my third bowl of ice cream and looking over the Twelve Steps when her assistant called with the offer.

And thanks to Irene Gallo, I’ve got some news for you about an awesome celebration of Dr Who – just click on the logo below to get all the details, and don’t forget to mark your calendars!

I’ll be winding down soon as we move towards the year; look out for a guest-review of Jasper Fforde‘s Shades of Grey and hopefully a final-2010 review of the Jordan-Sanderson epic, Towers of Midnight. 🙂

First off, Tor.com is bringing us a new story by Michael Swanwick and Eileen Gunn; it’ll go live on the site on the 21st of December, but registered users (yep, I’m one of them) will have the story in their inboxes a week early. 🙂 Here’s editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden to tell you a bit more:

“Our Christmas story for 2010, “The Trains that Climb the Winter Tree” by Michael Swanwick and Eileen Gunn, is shocking, lyrical, inventive, and as you might guess, a little mad. It will appear on the site on December 21st, but if you were a registered member ofTor.com, you’d be getting it a week early, personally emailed to you by elves and wood sprites laboring in the vast Tor.com network operations center.”

And here’s a short excerpt of the story to whet your imagination:

It was the middle of the night when the elves came out of the mirrors.

Everyone in the house was asleep. Outside, the city slumbered. Silent as shadows, the warriors went from room to room. Their knives were so sharp they could slit a throat without awakening their victim.

They killed all the adults.

The children they spared.

The bodies were carried away, back through the mirrors. Four of the elves swiftly stripped naked. They put on the adults’ nightclothes over their sexless bodies. Their own clothing they hid at the bottom of dresser drawers where the children never went. Then each one slowly and carefully assumed the form and features, down to the most intimate details, of Father, Mother, Grandmother, and Great-Aunt Adelaide.

Meanwhile, the other warriors were fetching boxes from the far side of the parlor mirror. With preternatural grace they removed from them tiny, toy-sized locomotives and passenger cars, boxcars, coal hoppers, refrigerator cars, gondolas, tank cars, flatbeds piled high with logs, floodlight cars, mail cars, ore cars, cabooses, and a tiny string of circus cars with gorillas in cages and giraffes poking through the roofs. . . .

Unwrapped tissue paper foamed up into drifts, which were then whisked magically away. Clever elfin fingers assembled tracks and placed alongside them stations, houses, bungalows, garages, churches, restaurants, fruit and vegetable stands, a roller rink, a grain elevator, a lumberyard, a coaling station, factories, water towers, and a central roundhouse with a turntable. Bridges spanned imaginary rivers. Tunnels split papier-mâché mountains. The transformers were hooked up, the electrical connections made, and the trains set in motion.

Then the elves left. The four who remained went to three separate bedrooms where they lay down and pretended to sleep. The one who was not Father pretended to snore.

It was Christmas Eve, and nobody outside the house knew that life inside it had changed forever.

Here’s the artwork commisioned for the story, done by the excellent Gary Kelly:

This is really great to see – sure, it’s a Tor.com endeavour but the news covered by each satellite will not be limited to Tor.com or, for that matter, Tor; there’s something to be said for a big publisher realizing that readers everywhere read widely, not limiting themselves to specific authors or publishing houses – these endeavours are squarely about getting the news out there. 🙂 So a hearty well-done to everyone involved!

And finally, the Solstice Giveaway is still running, so make sure of your entry! 🙂 (Note – I *hope* it’s still running – couldn’t get into Tor.com to verify, seems I’m having a problem with my connection)

Following last week’s deals with Jota in the Czech Republic and Infodar in Bulgaria Flora McMichael, Rights Manager at Quercus, has sold Croatian rights in the four-novel DEMI-MONDE series by UK novelist Rod Rees to Fraktura, after receiving offers from two houses.

World rights in Rod’s series were acquired pre-emptively by Quercus (who publish the first volume in January 2011) from agent John Jarrold for a major advance in 2009. Rights have now been sold in eight territories, also including the US, Germany, Russia, Poland and Italy.

THE DEMI-MONDE is set in a wonderfully imagined virtual world – the Demi-Monde of the title. Originally conceived by the US military as a training ground for their troops in the twenty-first century facing street fighting and enemies who use guerrilla tactics, rather than modern technology-based armies, the Demi-Monde was created by the world’s first quantum computer. Young singer Ella Thomas is sent there to rescue a VIP (she ticks all the boxes to blend into the world, which has a late-Victorian technology base) and discovers the world and its thirty million inhabitants, or ‘avatars’, are all too real. Especially those who run the world’s city-states, based on famous human monsters such as Reinhard Heydrich, Shaka Zulu, Empress Wu, Godfrey de Bouillon, Selim the Grim and Lavrentii Beria, with whom the world was seeded to make it more of a test…and that is only the beginning. There is already a fascinating website at www.thedemi-monde.com

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Seems like Rod is well on the way to taking over Europe! Let’s hope there’ll be more announcements soon. 🙂 Congrats to Rod and all the SFF readers in Croatia!

One of the delights of my working life is watching writers like Orson Scott Card create a new world and new characters to populate it. So when I first saw the synopsis for this new series, The Mither Mages, I was thrilled. And as the first of the trilogy, THE LOST GATE, emerged from Card’s mind and word processor, I was enthralled. Card is creating not one magical world for this series, but two – an Earth where the exiles of Westil have lived in isolation for almost 1500 years, and Westil itself, also cut off from the power of the Great Gates, dwindling but holding the memory of a time when greater magic was possible. For this first book, the two worlds remain separate – but there is a promise implicit in the birth or rebirth of a gatemage in each world. It starts small, one boy in the hills of Virginia. It won’t stay that way.

Danny North thought he was drekka, a child of the Families of Westil who has no magical talent. Even though he was the son of Odin, the current chief of the North Family, he showed no ability at all – he formed no clant , he worked no stone, he had no affinity for beast or plant. All he could do was run and hide, and try to stay out of the way of his grandfather, who thought that drekka should be culled from the family. But Danny is not drekka. He is something far more dangerous…dangerous to himself, and dangerous to his family. Danny is a gatemage, the forbidden talent. All the Families are sworn to kill any child who proves to be a gatemage, as part of the treaty that ended the wars between them hundreds of years ago. Danny’s discovery of his talent has doomed him to death, more surely than any lack of talent ever could have….

From the Press Release:

Orson Scott Card needs no introduction . . . One of the true stars of science fiction and fantasy writing, Card is an international bestselling author best known for the beloved classic Ender’s Game, which was widely read by millions of adults and young readers.

Card’s work has won multiple awards. His novel Ender’s Game (1985) and its sequel Speaker for the Dead (1986), both won the coveted Hugo and the Nebula Awards—making Card the only author to win both of America’s science fiction’s top prizes in consecutive years. He’s also won four Locus Awards and a Hugo for the short story “Eye for An Eye.” And now the award-winning New York Times bestselling author launches the first book in a new fantasy series with THE LOST GATE (A Tor Hardcover; January 4, 2011; $24.99).

All of this is why I’m thrilled to reveal Tor.com’s exclusive first excerpt, along with a note from the editor Beth Meacham, which goes live NOVEMBER 30th at noon! With free registration, Tor.com users will have first access to Chapter 2. To view this early, special preview of THE LOST GATE, please click on the following link: http://www.tor.com/lostgate/register. There will be lots more to come between now and January 4th – additional excerpts, blog posts, tour dates and other exciting materials – but for now this should whet a few appetites for this amazing original fantasy epic.

And finally, next week Wednesday Tor.com will be posting an original story by Abby Mei Ottis titled ‘Sweetheart’; I’ll have an excerpt from ‘Sweetheart’ for you later this week. 🙂 Here’s the cover by Greg Ruth:

The book will be available on the 7th of December (Pre-order from Amazon US here), and Tor is hosting a very special story from the anthology: Kage Baker’s ‘The Green Bird’

Here’s an excerpt of the story for you:

It amused Justice Rhabdion of Kaiin to dispose of malefactors by dropping them down a certain chasm located at the edge of his palace gardens.

Deep and steep-sided the chasm was, bottomed with soft sand, so that more often than not the objects of Justice Rhabdion’s displeasure survived the fall. This was all to the good, as far as Rhabdion was concerned, since it provided him with further subject for mirth. On claret-colored summer afternoons, he used to have his Chair of Office moved out on the balcony that overlooked his garden pleasaunce, and which, incidentally, gave him an excellent view into the chasm as well. There he would smile to watch the antics of the enchasmates, as they fruitlessly sought to escape or quarreled with one another.

So, other than being attacked by a snake on the way home this afternoon (read this post to get the story behind that!), I’ve got some news for you from Irene Gallo and John Jarrold. 🙂

First up, Adam Nevill has got himself another 2-book deal!

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PRESS RELEASE – SECOND TWO-BOOK DEAL FOR HORROR NOVELIST ADAM NEVILL

Julie Crisp, Editorial Director of Pan Macmillan in London, has concluded a World Rights deal for two further horror novels by British author Adam Nevill with agent John Jarrold, for a very good five-figure sum.

Adam Nevill’s novel APARTMENT 16 was published very successfully by Pan in May this year, reprinting three times and spending many weeks as Amazon.co.uk’s bestselling horror title, and THE RITUAL will follow in 2011. The two new books are, as yet, untitled. They will be published by Macmillan in 2012 and 2013.

Adam Nevill said: “Since my early contact with books, no other kind of fiction has captivated me, or transported me, in the same way as supernatural horror. Many years ago, the idea of contributing to this great field of the weird tale became a dream. To interpret my influences and to add something fresh, became my main purpose as a writer. The dream has been realised; the purpose continues. It’s genuinely a wondrous thing to receive another opportunity to create original works of disquiet, that will be given flight by the engines of a major publisher.”

Julie Crisp said: “Pan Macmillan has a tradition of publishing great British horror and so we’re thrilled to be working with Adam on his next two books. APARTMENT 16 and THE RITUAL were both terrifying and exciting adventures into the macabre and I can’t wait to see what nightmare scenarios he comes up with next to chill his readers.”

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Awesome news for Adam and Horror fans! 🙂 I’ve still got to get his work read and will hopefully get there soon. 🙂

Next up, some news from Irene Gallo regarding the going’s on over at Tor.com:

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First up, today us story day on Tor.com and the latest story is written by Kij Johnson, titled ‘Ponies”; here’s a sneak peek for you, as well as the story-artwork (by Chris Buzelli):

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The invitation card has a Western theme. Along its margins, cartoon girls in cowboy hats chase a herd of wild Ponies. The Ponies are no taller than the girls, bright as butterflies, fat, with short round-tipped unicorn horns and small fluffy wings. At the bottom of the card, newly caught Ponies mill about in a corral. The girls have lassoed a pink-and-white Pony. Its eyes and mouth are surprised round Os. There is an exclamation mark over its head.

The little girls are cutting off its horn with curved knives. Its wings are already removed, part of a pile beside the corral.

You and your Pony ___[and Sunny’s name is handwritten here, in puffy letters]___ are invited to a cutting-out party with TheOtherGirls! If we like you, and if your Pony does okay, we’ll let you hang out with us.

Sunny says, “I can’t wait to have friends!” She reads over Barbara’s shoulder, rose-scented breath woofling through Barbara’s hair. They are in the backyard next to Sunny’s pink stable.

Barbara says, “Do you know what you want to keep?”

Sunny’s tiny wings are a blur as she hops into the air, loops, and then hovers, legs curled under her. “Oh, being able to talk, absolutely! Flying is great, but talking is way better!” She drops to the grass. “I don’t know why any Pony would keep her horn! It’s not like it does anything!”

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It’s Kij’s second story for Tor – the first, The Cat Who Walked a Thousand Miles, can be found and enjoyed here.

There’s also an Index Page available now for Jo Walton‘s ‘Revisiting the Hugo’s’ series, which can be found here, and Jo’s got a novel coming out soon, Among Others. I was one of the lucky bloggers chosen to receive a copy, so I’ll be reviewing it, too. 🙂 Here’s the cover for you:

Tor.com’s also got a holiday story coming up (their 2nd Annual story), and this story will be coming from Michael Swanwick and Eileen Gunn; I’ll have the details for you when I receive them. 🙂

The story that follows is the first work of fiction set in the Vault of Heaven universe by a new epic fantasy writer named Peter Orullian. Peter has had a few short stories published, but “The Sacrifice of the First Sheason” introduces a world of long, tragic history in which there are no easy answers, and many mysteries that will be revealed, each in its own time, many of them in The Vault of Heaven, a series of novels which Tor will begin publishing with The Unremembered, this coming April.

Following “Sacrifice of the First Sheason,” Tor.com will publish two more stories set in this universe, and another nine tales will appear on the author’s website, http://www.orullian.com. Each of these stories is independent of the novels and of the other stories, though they share the same background.

This first tale takes place long before the action of The Unremembered. Other stories to come will deal with historical events that helped to shape later events in the world’s development that are keys to one or another element of the narrative of The Unremembered or a subsequent novel in the series. But each online story stands completely on its own.
At Tor, we have published quite a number of epic fantasy authors, and I personally have edited a lot of different series, from the multi-layered epics of Kate Elliott’s Crossroads books to the early heroic tales of Terry Goodkind; from David B. Coe’s Forelands and Southlands sagas to the Long Price Quartet of Daniel Abraham…and many others equally memorable. At SF conventions, readers will often ask me which is the epic fantasy that I love the most, but that’s a question I have never been able to answer. It’s like asking a parent which is his favorite child. It’s an impossible question.

They’re all different, of course, each with its own pleasures and rewards. The other question readers ask is what attracts me to the work or one author or another. And that’s not quite as hard to answer: I like what I like. Editors are readers first, and what we like as readers is…well, like any reader, we know when we see something we really like.

When I first read Peter Orullian’s early draft of The Unremembered, I was attracted by the characters, and then by mysteries in the story that made me feel I absolutely had to find out what was going on. Then, as I read more, I realized that I was hooked on his world, which has a rich history and culture, as well as some surprises I couldn’t have anticipated.

I also was fascinated by the unique connection of music to the magic of the world, something that readers will discover in The Unremembered. And there is a passion running through his narrative that is the hallmark of great storytelling. Without the excitement of great storytelling, there is no great epic fantasy.
So here’s the very first story set in Peter Orullian’s world, a tale from early in that world’s history. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.